Kryotech takes K6-III to half a gig

It's very cool but set to get frostier

Super cooling technology will make the AMD K6-III run at half a gigahertz, a company claimed today. Kryotech, a US company which uses cooling techniques, said it had managed to clock 500MHz using a 400MHz AMD K6-III chip. And a press release from the company said that the Pentium III, when released, will also achieve clock speeds of around one third more. The company's system is proprietary but as an AMD system in league with a Kryotech box goes to minus 40 degrees Celsius, it should give you an idea of how important cooling systems are with modern x.86 chips. We remember how when we had a plastic Acorn Atom box running a 6502 it overheated so much that the casing melted and we had to buy a hacksaw to give the beleaguered chip access to the outside world. A reader has pointed out that the 6502 was not a Motorola chip, as we originally said. In fact, Motorola tried to sue the company that made the 6502. But then we are old and also remember the 6502 advanced pipelining instruction set too. Another reader pointed out after we filed the original story that it did not have an advanced pipelining instruction set. He's probably too young to remember eight bit assembler programming. But if he's not, then we apologise. It was certainly more fun than programming the Zilog Z80... Kryotech claims it can flog a barebone K6-III system for around the $1,500 mark. The company is wrapped in mystery, not to say dry ice, and seems to be a start-up. Our understanding is that its technology is used by plenty of chip companies, to say the least. Ex-NCR engineers, possibly formerly based in Augsberg, Germany, could be behind the technology. But we cannot be sure here at The Register. Kryotech also seems to be able to make fast Digital Alpha chips run faster as well. Try a search on this site on Kryotech. ®